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The beeps.
It was the beeps that woke me. Fuck, they were so irritating. What was it anyway?
They reminded me of Chinese water torture, except with sound and, ya know, no water.
I wrinkled my nose as I tried to lift my hand to shove the pillow over my face, but when I tried to do that simple thing, my entire body ached.
“She’s waking up!”
The roar disturbed me. Jolted me in surprise and that sent agony shivering through me. It was then I realized how much I hurt. Jesus. It was everywhere. In my head, in my chest, even my toes ached.
It was like when you worked out for the first time in months. A forty-minute TABATA workout didn’t just kick your butt during the session, but after? Talk about moving like a ninety-year-old. This was that kind of pain I was talking about, but it went deeper because I felt so weak. So frail.
My brow puckered with irritation from the way I was hurting with no comprehension as towhy, and I decided I needed to open my eyes. But for some reason, that wasn’t easy.
How could eyelidshurt?
What the fuck was going on with me?
Another yell roared from someone close to me, and I felt my hand being picked up and my fingers being squeezed. A scent blossomed in my nose, but I didn’t know it. Or at least, I didn’t recognize it over the thousand other scents in this space. Then, I felt the soft brush of something against my temple, and as the scent and touch worked together, I realized who it was.
Finn.
I moaned his name and I heard him grit out, “Open your eyes for me, beautiful, mycailín.”
God, I wanted to obey. I really did. But opening my eyes wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
“They’re coming, Finn,” someone told him, and there was a lilt of Irish to the tone that comforted me. In fact, Finn had it too, which was funny because I knew he hadn’t been raised in the Old Country. His mom had been though, just like mine. We both had sayings and particular phrases that came from them—even if Finn had run from his mother while I’d clung to mine.
“Please, Aoife, let me see those beautiful eyes.”
Finn? Being charming? In front of someone else?
Christ, was I dying?
That thought, not his request, had me tearing my eyelids open. I wasn’t ready to die, dammit. I had so much sex to make up for. And not just any sex, but sex withthiscrazy, beautiful man. A man who made Jamie Dornan look like a six out of ten.Yeah, that hot.
I heard a groan escape him, one so filled with relief that I frowned in confusion.
“Finn?” I repeated, my eyes foggy as I stared up at him. I couldn’t seem to say anything else, my tongue incapable of forming other words. He was my anchor in that moment. My everything.
“Aoife,” he breathed, then he squeezed my hand and whispered, “Let the doctors take care of you. Be a good girl.”
More confusion filled me, but he squeezed my hand just as a team of people surged in from a door to his right.
Not people.
Doctors.
Finn backed up to let them move around me, but I wanted him close. I needed him at my side—I was scared and hurting, dammit. I needed him, where was he going?
“Her pulse is spiking.”
“Finn,” I moaned.
I heard him as he gritted out, “Aoife, baby, I’m here. I’m over here.”
“And he shouldn’t be,” someone mumbled under their breath as they touched me, moving me and prodding me here and there. Places where it stung, places that sent shards of agony slicing through me.
